Culture / TV

Get to know Jenna Ortega, the star of Netflix’s ‘Wednesday’

Jenna Ortega has reached holy trifecta as far as we're concerned. In 2022 alone, she starred in Scream (firmly solidifying her place amongst fellow scream queens) appeared in an A24 porn slasher X and now has her own Netflix series, WednesdayWednesday, based on the Wednesday Addams character from The Addams Family universe has come out on Netflix and is No. 1.

The 20-year-old's IMDb is looking pretty stellar from where we're sitting and we wanted to know more. Watching her give interviews is a charming experience as you can feel she's yet to be ironed out by the media machine and is still giving us some honest details about her life. Here's what we found out.

 

She's good friends with Maddie Ziegler

"Maddie and I are the same person in different fonts" she tells us in Wired's Autocomplete YouTube series. Jenna's front is that she performed "autopsies on little animals when [she] was younger," including "little lizards that I found that were dead in my backyard." Not too dissimilarly to Wednesday. Maddie was more of the breaking out into different characters and pulling funny faces weird, Jenna adds.

 

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She's A24 Royalty

Jenna Ortega appeared in A24's X alongside Mia Goth as the innocent girlfriend of a college film nerd cum porn director. Before she decided to get on the other side of the camera.

 

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She was in You

Jenna starred alongside Penn Badgley in You as the meddling youngster who lives in Joe's apartment building.

 

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She's been an actress for half of her life

She was discovered at age six when her mum posted a monologue she'd filmed to Facebook where a friend who worked in the industry glimpsed her talent.

 

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Transforming into Wednesday was big for her

To prepare for the role, Ortega underwent "the most physical transformation I've ever done; I cut my hair, and it's black, and mannerism-wise, speaking cadence-wise, expression-wise, I'm trying to pull from a different toolbox this time around. I think it's a surprise to the audience, but myself as well." she told the Hollywood Reporter. Another challenge for her hair and makeup artist Nirvana Jalalvand? Getting Jenna's braids symmetrical for 7 months in a row. 

 

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